# US Unemployment Is 4.3%. The Stuff Underneath Says Otherwise. 2M Jobless Over Six Months, Up 3 Straight Years.

Published: 2026-06-11

US unemployment is 4.3% and the headline curve looks like it is calming - eased from 4.5% in Nov, held at 4.3% since March. The data underneath says otherwise. Long-term joblessness (27+ weeks) has nearly doubled since 2023 to 2.0 million people, with three straight years up and no give-back. When long-term pulls away from the headline like this, that is the 2008 pattern - into 2008 the long-term line towered about 6x its pre-crisis level while U-3 only doubled. Covid never had this shape; rehiring was too fast. Today's rise has the slow-grind 2008 shape, with no recession to blame. Composition: the long-term share fell to 17.8% after Covid (Feb 2023) and is back to 27.5% now (GFC extreme was 45.5%) - more than one in four of the unemployed are now past the line that scars. Structural test: measured against the whole workforce, long-term joblessness has stepped up once in 25 years - 0.53% to 0.81% in the dot-com era. This cycle is at 1.18% in May and still rising. Is AI doing to the jobless floor what dot-com did? Too early to call - the test comes when this cycle finally turns. Fits the picture from last week's note: consumer sentiment at a 73-year low, valuations near 145-year highs. 5-slide deck on BLS / FRED data through May 2026.

## Where to find the full content

- HTML page (full text, image deck, links): https://tigzig.com/post/us-unemployment-long-term-hidden-jun2026
- Markdown of the HTML page: send GET https://tigzig.com/post/us-unemployment-long-term-hidden-jun2026 with header `Accept: text/markdown`
- PDF deck (full analysis, charts, sources): https://tigzig.com/files/US_UNEMPLOYMENT_LONG_TERM_JUN2026.pdf

## Tags
portfolio-quants

---

Note: this is a short text-only post (release announcement / brief commentary). The full body lives at the HTML page URL above - there is no deck source or PDF transcript for this one. The image referenced in the body (if any) is a generic illustration, not analytical content.